In some regions of Germany and Europe, authorities have severly restricted the spreading of slurry and digestate on agricultural areas in recent years . The reason is the increasing pollution of groundwater with nitrate (nitrogen).
This is especially problematic in regions where many animal fattening farms are located, for instance in the northwest of Lower Saxony. In these areas, every other groundwater measuring point shows excessive nitrate levels. As far as nitrate pollution in groudnwater is concerned, Germany shares with Malta the last position of the EU ranking.
Therefore, large quantities of liquid manure must be transported to other regions where no excess of nutrients exists. Transport costs can be substantial, because manure and digestate consist mostly of water; depending on the region, the disposal cost for liquid manure cost is already about 10 - 20 euros per tonne.
Or the slurry and digestate must be prepared so that only the unwanted nutrients in the region need to be shipped out, but not the water. For this purpose, different technologies are used, for example, centrifuges, filtration or evaporation methods.
Our company designs and builds, often in cooperation with partners, biogas plants in Germany and abroad, in which hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of liquid manure are converted in biogas and biomethane annually. All necessary by-products are processed on site and returned as a product to the economic cycle.